


No Coffee Until She's 3

by lazyfic



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, Holiday Fic Exchange, M/M, soon to be dads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21926725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfic/pseuds/lazyfic
Summary: Prompt: "Dan and Phil are preparing for the birth of their child and they’re going a bit crazy buying stuff for their room. Cue buying crazy items on Amazon and parenting books galore as they prepare for the new addition to their lives."
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 16
Kudos: 29
Collections: Phandom Fic Fests Holiday Exchange 2019





	No Coffee Until She's 3

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yiffandquiff (paradisobound)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradisobound/gifts).



> This fic is for [Yiffandquiff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/princesslexi763/pseuds/Yiffandquiff) ! I really hope you enjoy! I had so much fun writing this for you!
> 
> And special thanks to my beta [chiridotalaevis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiridotalaevis/pseuds/chiridotalaevis) who was an enormous help to me! Thank you again!

Boxes sat cluttering up their entryway. Every day new boxes would arrive and today was not an exception. By the time Dan got home, there was a whole pile waiting for him. He sifted through them. Four new ones must have arrived while he was out. Phil had said it was a bit like a never-ending Christmas without all the decorations, and the gifts weren’t really for them. 

“Phil,” Dan sang drawing out Phil’s name, “Did you order more stuff from Amazon again?”

From another room, Phil answered sheepishly, “Maybe.”

Dan pulled off his coat and hung it in the cupboard by the front door, before slipping off his shoes and going to find Phil. He found him sitting on the floor staring up at the blank wall of the spare room they hadn’t finished converting yet. Boxes were stacked against one of the walls, furniture that needed to be assembled laid in pieces on the floor, and there were swatches of paint on one of the walls that they both decided they hated. Dan had been so adamant about a light grey being the perfect, calming color for the room and Phil argued that a forest green would be better. In the end, after two days of having the color samples on the wall, they realized they were both horribly wrong and hadn’t touched paint colors since. The room was a bit of a mess. 

“Our house is going to be filled with so many boxes we won’t be able to walk around if you keep buying stuff at this rate,” Dan teased, a warm smile soft against his face. It wasn’t just Phil, Dan was also just as guilty of buying random things off the internet they probably didn’t really need. Phil could argue that Dan was even worse, since he’d actually bought stuff he’d seen advertised on Instagram once or twice. And one of those things he was still anxiously waiting for several weeks later.

“They make buying stuff too easy!” Phil tried to defend, “All I have to do is click one button and it’s on its way!” 

In the beginning, they had both been reluctant to buy anything, afraid that they might somehow jinx the dream of being parents and have the unthinkable happen. It was a horrible thought, but it was a very real thought, so they refrained. Then one day a package arrived in the post from Phil’s aunt Roz and delicately wrapped inside the package was a carefully knitted white bobble hat with specs of gold glitter throughout it. It was the smallest hat Phil had ever seen and it immediately brought tears to his eyes. His tears were shared when he showed the precious gift to Dan. It started to actually feel real then. With their surrogate well into the second trimester, it was safe to tell their closest family, but they hadn’t quite brought themselves to start buying anything until the hat showed up. Ever since then, Phil had been on his own personal shopping spree, buying everything they could ever possibly need for the baby. 

Dan sat down next to Phil, “Well, there are four more packages for you out on the table.”

“Why didn’t you bring the boxes with you?” Phil asked.

Dan’s jaw dropped, “You go get them, I just sat down!” 

“No, I can’t, I’ve been sitting too long and my legs are asleep. If I stand up to go get them I’ll fall over.” Phil whined.

Dan rolled his eyes so hard, he almost tipped over.

“Rock, paper, scissors?” Dan suggested and Phil smiled.

“1, 2, 3, go!” The first round went to Phil, the second to Dan, and with paper beating out rock, Phil won the best of three. Respecting the 15+ year tradition of rock, paper, scissors, Dan accepted his defeat and stood back up to go get the packages. As he was walking, Dan smiled to himself wondering how many nights they might end up using rock, paper, scissors to see who would get up to feed the baby. 

When he returned, he dropped the smaller packages into Phil’s lap, then sat crossed legged next to him still holding the larger ones. Dan ripped into one and pulled out a box with what looked like a coffee maker on the front.

“Babybrezza? What the-? What is this?” Dan asked turning the box over, “I know how much you love coffee and she is going to be half you, but I don’t think we should be giving coffee to our baby until she’s at least 3.”

Phil laughed as he looked over at what Dan was holding, “Oh! That’s to make the baby formula. Look how cool it looks!” He took the box from Dan’s hands and read from it, “Most advanced way to automatically make a warm formula bottle instantly.”

“Right… and what did people do before this most advanced way?” Dan asked.

Phil shrugged, “Used a microwave, I think.”

Dan smirked, “Microwave,” he said quietly in the all too familiar way of their youth.

Phil glanced at him smiling and shook his head. The box Phil had opened contained sets of brightly colored socks of all kinds of patterns and various headbands to match. The socks seemed so tiny it was hard to imagine they were soon going to have a baby small enough to wear them. Sometimes it was hard to imagine that they were going to have a baby at all. The whole process had been unlike anything they’d ever done before and sometimes if they were being honest the whole thing felt a bit alien. They were used to doing things just the two of them. Of course, over the years they’d had to learn to share some of that control with their merch company and going on world tours required the help of many other people. But at the end of the day, it was always in their nature to face whatever adventure came their way by themselves. Just the two of them. This, however, was not something they could achieve by themselves. Having a baby required a lot of planning, more planning than they ever anticipated, and it also required them to put a lot of trust into other people. It seemed overwhelming at times and once or twice Phil wondered if they had made a massive, life-changing mistake. 

Sometimes it would hit him in the middle of the night and thrust him awake into the darkness of their bedroom. His heart would race and it’d take him a good minute or two to slow his breathing down to something more comfortable. Thankfully, he could slow his breathing down easy enough, but his mind was another story. There were still so many things they needed to do and get and learn and Phil wasn’t sure he was going to be able to do it. He tried to remind himself that he’d felt similar before and they managed to pull through it. He thought back to their second tour, when everything felt like it was falling apart and Dan was having a breakdown. They managed to pull through and ended up having some of the best times of their life . And this would definitely be up there with amazing life experiences to have. He tried to remind himself of all that, but this felt even more daunting than a world tour. 

He really should have stopped reading parenting books before bed because they always resulted in nightmares where he would drop the baby or the baby would take off a mask to reveal a monster face. In either case, the nightmares were never pleasant and always made it difficult to fall back asleep. Tonight was no different.

Dan stirred next to him and reached out to pat Phil on the chest, “Is it your turn to panic tonight?”

“Dan, I don’t know anything about how to be a parent.”

“Sure you do, what about all those books we’ve been reading?”

“Those books just create more questions than they do answers. There seem to be a million different ways to do every little thing and each book has its own way of doing it and any other way is the wrong way.” Phil was getting himself worked up again, “What if we do something the wrong way and she turns out to be the next Thanos or something?”

Dan huffed out a laugh into his pillow, “Aw baby girl Thanos, I think we finally found her name.”

“You laugh now, just wait until she eliminates half of all life.” It felt good to joke a bit, Phil knew he was being ridiculous, knew that this was just his brain trying to make things more difficult than they needed to be and that he just needed his anchor, his grounding force, to bring him back down to reality. He needed Dan. He wasn’t going to be doing this alone. He had Dan by his side every step of the way just like he’d had for the last 15 years. And they’d managed to get through everything else life had thrown their way. 

After a minute or so of them breathing, Dan’s comforting hand laying heavy against Phil’s chest, Dan spoke softly: “Phil, you are going to be an amazing parent. You are the most loving and supportive person I have ever known. You care so deeply and it is in your nature to take care of the people in your life. And give yourself some credit, you’ve been taking care of me the last 15 years, Norman is still the happiest fish in London, and Harry-”

Dan took his hand off Phil’s chest to pat the bed between them and quietly called the dog at the foot of the bed, gently waking him up. The adorable mutt who was too fluffy for his own good crawled up just to fall back asleep in the small space between them.

“And Harry,” Dan continued, putting his hand back on Phil’s chest, “We learned how to take care of him easily enough and now it’s like we’ve been doing it forever. You -we- are far more capable than we ever give ourselves credit for.” 

“Thanks,” Phil whispered as he brought Dan’s knuckles to his lips and kissed them. He rolled over on his side facing Dan with their hands still clasped, their dog nestled between them, “We’re going to be real papas soon.” 

They’d each had nights like that where one was temporarily overtaken with anxiety over the quickly approaching fatherhood and the other one was hiding it a little better. But they always got through those moments and the rest of the time was filled with a type of excitement they’d never felt before. They didn’t feel like their life together was necessarily missing anything, but with the addition of Norman into their little family, followed by Harry, those early desires to be dads started to grow big and bright again. And now they were just a few weeks away from holding their first child in their arms. 

It brought tears to Dan’s eyes every time he pictured it, looking down at her sweet sleeping face and holding her knowing she was half Phil. Phil was the person he loved and cherished in ways he never believed possible and soon that love would evolve and expand to include a little baby. And though Dan believed biology wasn’t the most important thing, it sparked something in him knowing the world was going to have a baby that was made up with all the weird and amazing that Phil was made up with. And when the time came for their daughter to have a sibling, Dan knew no matter how they came about, the child would be theirs and loved unconditionally as well. 

Phil had gone through a stressful process of getting them where they were and for that Dan was very grateful. He knew that the day of donation was a lot harder than they had expected it to be.

And it was a day both of them remembered like it was yesterday.

When Phil walked into the room it was nicer than he expected. There were no fluorescent lights beaming down from above. Instead a few lamps kept the room softly lit. He was almost feeling optimistic about it, until he closed the door and saw the giant LOCK DOOR DURING COLLECTION sign right in his face, which immediately brought him back to the reality of the situation. He deadbolted the door with a clunk and immediately imagined everyone on the other side knowing exactly what he was about to be doing in there. They knew exactly how long it was going to take him to...make a deposit, which then made him think what if he took too long and they all thought he was enjoying it a little too much in there? Or what if he finished too quickly and everyone thought… This was stupid. Thinking about the people out there was not going to help him get the job done. He walked across the small room to the sink and began washing his hands like he’d been instructed to do. Then he had another look around, there was a sofa facing a small tv on the wall and there were magazines on the coffee table with women who had giant breasts that he was afraid to touch for more reasons than one. He pulled out his phone and called Dan.

Dan answered instantly, almost as if he’d known Phil would be calling. 

“Dan I can’t do this,” Phil said sounding a little stressed, “there’s...boobs in here and a sofa where a bunch of naked butts have sat. I feel a little queasy. What if this doesn’t work? Not my penis, but my sperm? What if this doesn’t work and my stuff is all dead from all the hours of laptop browsing?”

“Ok, firstly, take a deep breath,” Dan said before taking a deep breath himself.Phil took one to match, the sound of Dan on the other end was already helping to calm him down, “secondly, there are boobs in there?”

Phil glanced towards the coffee table where the magazines sat, “Not real boobs, just fake giant porn boobs with pointy nipples.”

“Oh no, not pointy nippled tits!”

“You are not helping,” Phil said unamused.

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” Dan apologized, “Do you want me to come in there?”

“No! If you come in here then everyone out there is going to know I couldn’t do this myself!”

“Ok, ok, hey take another deep breath. None of this is solely dependent on you, remember? If all your swimmers are dead or whatever, it doesn’t matter. Nothing changes between us, yeah? So, just have some fun in there, ok?”

Phil huffed out a defeated laugh and was quiet for a moment, “I really want this, Dan. I want this for us. I want us to be dads.”

“That will happen for us no matter what the outcome of today is,” Dan said earnestly then paused before whispering, “So get your dick out, Lester, and get us some sperm.” 

Phil laughed then, an authentic deep laugh that loosened and released the tension he’d been holding in his body. 

When the results finally came back later in the week that Phil’s swimmers were as healthy and active as anyone could have hoped, they cried and then laughed about the fact that they were crying about Phil’s sperm. 

And now they were not too far away from the birth of their first baby. 

They were still getting ready with all the packages they’d been ordering. Dan opened the other box he’d brought in and inside was a baby wipe warmer, “Really? Was this necessary?”

“It seems so useful!” Phil defended, “Cold wipes are so awful and this warms them up!”

Dan squinted his eyes at Phil, “You bought this for yourself, didn't you?”

“I did not!” Phil lied with guilt splashed all across his face. 

Dan shook his head and failed to hold back a smile.

Phil opened one of the other boxes he had and pulled out a plastic box with different colored lights on the top, “Ok this one might actually be dumb.”

“What even is it?” Dan asked.

“Well, um, you put it next to your baby while they’re crying and it’s supposed to light up to tell you why.”

“That piece of plastic is supposed to know why our baby is crying?” Dan asked.

“Yeah,” Phil laughed, “lets put in the batteries and try it!”

“Phil, we don’t have our baby yet,” Dan said.

Phil fumbled with the last battery and then switched it on, “That’s okay, you can be our baby. Make a crying noise.”

“No way!”

“Please,” Phil whined with a put upon pout.

Dan couldn’t resist and rolled his eyes, “Okay fine.”

Dan made a fake crying noise and they immediately started laughing. Dan lightly shoved Phil’s shoulder. 

“Okay wait, try it again. This time don’t start laughing,” Phil suggested. 

“You started laughing first!”

“Ok, ok try again.”

Dan made another fake crying noise and the little machine lit up.

“It works!” Phil exclaimed, “it lit up the yellow one which means you’re annoyed.”

“Shut up,” Dan laughed, as he tried to take the machine out of Phil’s hand, but Phil was too quick to hold it out of Dan’s reach. 

“You laugh now, but that thing is going to be what saves us when our daughter starts crying and we can’t figure out why!”

As they laughed, Dan kept trying to take the thing out of Phil’s hand, until they were playfully wrestling it away from one another. Dan eventually got Phil pinned beneath him, the baby cry detector tossed to the side and forgotten, his hands around each of Phil’s wrists up by his head and all his weight straddling Phil. Dan took a moment to stare down into the eyes of the only man he’d ever seriously loved, the only one he could ever see a future with, and here they were in that part of their future that always seemed so far away, so out of reach. But they were living it now, they were here, and they were still together, madly obsessed with each other and excited to take on this next part of their life. Dan reached down and pressed a kiss to the corner of Phil’s mouth, then one to the other side, before finally meeting his lips fully with Phil’s. When he pulled back to look into Phil’s eyes once again, he saw that they were so full of love for the life they shared together and knew he was looking into a mirror because his eyes would show the same. 

Dan released one of Phil’s wrists and caressed the side of his face, his days-old stubble rough under his fingers. He let go of his other wrist and sat back slowly, gliding his hands down Phil’s chest. Phil was smiling up at Dan with intimate serenity filling him with pleasurable warmth.

“I’m so glad I’ve gotten to do life with you,” Dan smiled.

Phil put his hands on Dan’s thighs and began rubbing soothing circles. 

“Me too,” Phil said barely above a whisper. 

Dan bent down and kissed Phil deeply, with so much love and familiarity it was like a blanket of intimacy swaddled them. Before too long Dan rearranged himself to be slotted right next to Phil with his head resting on Phil’s outstretched arm. Their legs were tangled together in a comfortable mess and they were both in the mood to just lay there and kiss. He indulged in the moment letting it wash over him. Eventually, drunk on dopamine, they fell into a fit of giggles and pulled slightly apart. They laid there for awhile wrapped up in each other’s arms before Phil broke the silence.  
“What about a space-themed nursery? We still have the moon mirror in storage, don’t we?”  
Dan rolled away a little to get a better look at their still unfinished baby room, “Yeah, we do but don’t you think space might be a little scary for a baby?” Dan worried, “I don’t want her stressing over the vastness of space and trigger an existential crisis before she can even sit up.”  
Phil rolled his eyes but Dan was probably right. They might not have her room anywhere close to being finished, but one thing was for sure, their daughter was going to grow up with two papas who were still madly in love with each other even after all these years.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! May this new year bring you many blessings!
> 
> [link to tumblr if you'd like :)](https://lazy-phan.tumblr.com/post/189984588734/no-coffee-until-shes-3-rating-t-word-count-34k)


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